The Long Wait

Chapter Twelve

Philbert’s was bustling with activity. Signs pasted on the windows blared “Anniversary Sale!” in fat red letters with the usual business about how prices had been slashed in half. I got behind a stout woman with a shopping bag under her arm and went in after her. I looked around, but as far as the customers were concerned, I was just another one of the crowd. I bought another work shirt just to have something to carry around, made my way through the aisles while I looked over the hardware, then slipped into one of the phone booths along the wall.

The operator got me my number and I could see the guy in the back answer the call. He had a habitual stoop that made his glasses seem to be ready to fall off his nose and he wasn’t too polite when he barked hello.

I said, “I know how you can pick up a quick hundred, feller.”

They always get polite when you use that approach even if they think it might be a wrong number. There’s always the chance that it isn’t. I watched him look around quickly then muffle the mouthpiece. “Who... you know who this is?” He sounded hopeful.

“Yep. You’re in the printing end at Philbert’s.”

“Why, that’s right!” Now he was surprised. He turned his back to me and I couldn’t see his face any longer.

“Can you get off for a few minutes?”

“Sure.”

“Swell, go outside and start walking south. You got that?”

“Well, yes... but...”

I hung up and watched him. First he stared at the phone licking his lips, then must have decided that nothing could happen to him in the daytime. He waved over a young fellow and went in the back. He came out with a coat over his arm and threaded through the mob.

I stayed right behind him.

Outside, he took a look around, shrugged and started walking south. Slowly. When he was directly opposite the Ford I touched his arm and said, “In the car.”

The guy twitched, shot me a look over his shoulder, then let his mouth fall apart. I said, “In the car,” again and he opened the door without a sound and shimmied over against the other side. He was popeyed with fright and couldn’t swallow his own spit.

It was about time somebody recognized me.

I was getting better at the game. I stuck a cigarette in the comer of my mouth, lit it and leered at him. “You can make that hundred if you feel like it, friend. You can start yapping and just make it rough on yourself. What do you think?”

He got his spit swallowed, but he still couldn’t speak. His head made a jerky nod and nothing else. “Five years ago. Do you remember that long?”

Another swallow and another nod.

“Bob Minnow was the D. A. then. Before he was killed he went to your place and left something there. Remember that?”

“I... wasn’t there,” he managed to say. “Lee... he mentioned it. I remember... now.”

“What did he leave?”

This time he shook his head nervously “I... dunno. He left something. Lee gave him... a ticket. Maybe it’s still in the files.”

“Can you find it?”

“Not... without the ticket. I already... looked.”

The cigarette almost fell out of my hand. I could feel my eyes turning into nasty little slits that blurred everything I looked at. “Who told you to look?”

He was flat against the door, his eyes wide, showing white all around. “Just the other day... Logan, that reporter. He came in and... asked me the same thing.”

So Logan had figured it out first. He remembered before I did that Philbert’s did photograph and photostat work. Nice going, Logan.

I said, “Why can’t you find it?”

“Hell, mister... we handle thousands of jobs like that. All the companies, they take us their work. Maybe I can find it. I’ll look if you want. It’ll take a couple of weeks, but...”

“Damn it, I haven’t got that long!”

“Golly, without a ticket...”

“Shut up.”

I pulled in on the butt and flicked it out the window. It landed on a guy’s foot and he was going to say something nasty when he saw my face. He kept on walking.

When I reached for my wallet the guy followed my hand every inch of the way and he relaxed when he saw it wasn’t a gun. My pile was going down. I slipped out a crisp hundred and passed it to him. “Mac, keep something in mind. Every cop in town is looking for me, so it’s no secret that I’m around. You mention one word to anybody that I’ve seen you and I guarantee that for the rest of your life you’ll be afraid to walk home alone at night. You understand that?”

He got all white. His hands shook so bad he almost lost the bill.

“How late do you stay open?”

“Until t-twelve.”

“Good. You stay there until you hear from me.”

A frantic nod said he would and he almost broke his neck getting out the door. I was back in traffic before he reached the store, cut down a side street and turned north.

Fifteen minutes later I was driving past the white house with the fence around it. Mrs. Minnow was on the porch in a rocker with her head going up and down the street every few seconds. She rocked too fast. Mrs. Minnow was nervous.

There were two of them, one on each end of the street. New sedans with a man behind the wheel. They were young men, not smoking or reading. Not doing anything. If there were more I didn’t see them and wasn’t about to go looking. I kept on going until I found a soda store that served snacks, went into a booth and ordered a sandwich and coffee. When I finished I ordered the same thing again, bought a magazine and dawdled over it until it was dark. The owner of the joint was coughing and looking over my way trying to let me know he wanted to close up, so I paid my bill. An extra buck made him smile again. For luck I tried Logan’s office. He still hadn’t showed up.

I hung around the street for a while smoking the last of my butts. I picked up another pack in a delicatessen and started on that. Overhead, a rumble of thunder rolled across the city and the sky lit up in the west. I took my time drifting back to the car and made it just as the rain started.

It wasn’t too bad, sitting there watching it roll down the windows. It kept time with everything I was thinking, a nice background to dream against. In a way I hoped it would keep up. Later, perhaps, I would sit someplace listening to it slam against the roof while I put all the pieces where they belonged.

My watch read nine-twenty. I kicked the engine over and turned around at the corner.

Smart. I had to be smart. The boys with the badges were thinking along the same lines I was and expected me back at the Minnow house. Or else they were bodyguarding the old lady in case the Johnny McBride they wanted had further ideas of revenge.

This time I parked on the street behind the house. I left the key in the lock in case I had to get away fast, rolled up the windows against the rain and pulled on my jacket. I went back a few houses until I found a driveway, turned in and walked back to the fence line that separated the yards.

I wasn’t worried about being seen. My clothes blended with the foliage and if anybody was staked out behind the place they weren’t out in the open in this weather. When I reached the garage behind the house I huddled in the shadows until I had every detail in my mind.

The guy I was looking for was just inside the enclosed porch and for an instant I saw his hat silhouetted against a night light in the kitchen. It was enough. He probably was being very careful, but not quite careful enough.

I followed the hedge line, moving slowly with my body down low to the ground. I was all the way up to the house before I realized how mechanically I had done it.

Almost like I had done it before.

Something was there like a battery of floodlights winking on and off in my brain while cold hands pulled at my back. Just like that the sweat started to move down my shoulder blades. I hit my belt with my hands and felt for something that should be there, damn near going crazy when I couldn’t find it.

It passed. It took a little while and left me with the shakes, but it passed. I was cold all over because something that was buried years back in time almost came back to me. I cursed and tried to think of what it was.

The house was a ghostly wall pressing against my back, the vine on the trellis wet fingers against my hand.

This.

Had this been what I had done before?

Had I stood in this same spot, climbed up that trellis and gone in that window up there before?

I shook the thought out of my head. Someplace I had read about twins, how there was thought transference. Maybe it happened to people who looked alike too. If there was anything to be remembered I didn’t want to know about it. The rain muffled the curse on my lips and I swung up on the trellis.

It didn’t take ten seconds to reach the window and two to open it.

The room smelled of a woman and the outlines of a bed were visible against the wall. I left the window open, eased across to the door and put my ear to it. Downstairs a radio was playing softly, but nothing else. I opened the door, looked out in the hall and stepped through.

Stairs ran down on my one side and to my left a pair of doors opened off the corridor. The one in the middle was too pinched in to be a room so I picked the last one.

I was right this time. The door was unlocked and probably hadn’t been opened often in the last five years. The musty smell of disuse hung in the air and every step I took tossed back dust from the carpet. The light from the street lamp out front put a yellow glow on everything, casting long dim shadows across the floor.

There was a studio couch, a desk, a pair of filing cabinets and a safe against the walls, reminders of a man who had made this room his den. I had to be right the first time. There wouldn’t be any second chance. I started across the room to the safe when the beam of light that hit me in the back threw a monstrous shadow on the wall.

I damn near screamed, swung around and stood there trembling in every muscle of my body. The light hit me in the eyes went over my face and she said, “I knew you’d come.”

It left me with hardly enough voice to say, “Turn that damn thing off before they see it!”

The light snicked off.

“How’d you know I was here?”

“I sensed it, young man. I have lived in this house so long listening for footsteps from this room that never came that when someone was in here I knew it. One of the benefits of old age, you might say.

“Who’s downstairs?”

“Two men.”

“F. B. I.?”

“One is. The other is a state man. They don’t know you’re here.”

I picked the light from her hand. “Do you know the combination of that safe?”

“No, only Bob knew it. He never wrote the combination down and it has never been open since his death. There was never anything of any value in there. He kept all his personal papers in a safe-deposit vault.”

“What went in there?”

“Just important things he brought home from the office.”

“I’m going to open it.” I was sweating without knowing why.

She said it very simply. “Go right ahead.”

The darkness hid my grin, but she heard the shallow laugh I let out. “You have one hell of a lot of nerve. I’m supposed to be a killer.”

“It hasn’t been proven to me... yet.”

Some woman. Her husband would have been proud of her. I snapped the light on, shielding the beam with my hand. I walked over in front of the safe, knelt down and took a good look at it. I reached for the knob and in the soft glow of the light saw the tremble in my hand.

Everything was familiar again. Everything. I looked at the face of that damned safe and no matter where I looked every rivet, every detail of the thing was an old friend. My breath was coming in short jerks that racked my chest. There were things coming into my mind that clawed at my guts with steel nails and tried to rip them out.

I was cold. Damn, I was cold. The past was pushing by the present and I felt it ooze out where it could be seen. The dial on the safe was a face laughing at me and I knew that it wasn’t just this safe I was familiar with, but a lot of them. My mind knew every one of them!

Now I was all right. I was a guy with a short memory. It was clean. For five years I had searched for the past without finding it, and when it did begin to show I didn’t want to see it.

I knew she was watching me from behind. I made my hand go back to the dial and let my body follow some unnatural instinct that put extra nerves in my fingers and gave my ears some uncanny perception. I knelt there for twenty minutes patiently exploring the supposedly foolproof workings of that lock and at the end of that time I heard what I was listening for, turned the knob and opened the door.

A ten-year-old newspaper lay on the bottom shelf. A tobacco tin of Indianhead pennies was on the other. I pulled open the top drawer and there was a pink numbered ticket from Philbert’s lying against the back.

My back ached from kneeling so long. I stood up, pushed the door shut and stuck the ticket in my pocket. Mrs. Minnow took the light back and I saw her face. She was looking pleased.

“There was something there?”

“Yes. Do you want to see it?”

“Would it be any good to me?”

“Not now. Later, maybe, but not now.”

“Keep it,” she said, “and good luck.”

“Thanks.”

She let out a sob as I left the room, but didn’t follow me. I went back the way I came, took the same route to the car and climbed in. It was still raining and my pants were soaked from knocking up against the bushes.

But I didn’t feel cold any more. Just hot. Good and damned hot.

The guy behind the counter was as white as I had left him.

His mouth was dry from licking it so much and the shreds of a block of a rubber eraser were scattered all across the woodwork. He took the ticket, went in the back where I heard him pulling the drawers out, then returned with a large brown envelope. Without a word he passed it across the counter, took the two bucks the tag said the job was worth and rang it up.

He was very slow in turning around. It was necessary that I wait until he turned around because I wanted him to see my face. His eyes got glassy and he nodded without anything having been said and I went out.

I drove down a block, parked under a street lamp and opened the envelope. Inside were two identical positives and the negative of a photostated letter. It had been written in longhand and addressed to Robert Minnow.

It read:

That was all there was to it, but it was enough. I stuck the stuff back in the envelope, pulled up the rubber carpet on the floorboard and laid it against the boards. The carpet fell back and covered it nicely.

I drove on up the street to a bar, went in and ordered a drink and carried it back in the phone booth with me. Then I shoved in a nickel and sipped the top off my drink while I was connected with police headquarters.

A voice said, “Sergeant Walker speaking.”

“Captain Lindsey.”

“Hang on, I’ll connect you.”

A couple of clicks later Lindsey growled into the phone. I said, “McBride, Captain. I have news for you.”

“I have news for you too.” His voice sounded raw. “Where are you?”

“Downtown.”

“We just found your friend.”

I grabbed the phone. “Troy?”

“No. Logan. His car was run off a cliff and smashed itself to hell in the bottom of the gully.”

The air couldn’t find its way into my lungs His words were still there in my ears and I finally got the sense out of them. “He was... run off?”

“Yeah. At least that’s the way I figure it. All the other experts around here think he was cockeyed drunk when it happened.”

“He was on a bat...” I started to say.

Lindsey cut me short. “Yeah, we could smell it. The doctor said the same thing. There was a body in the car we couldn’t identify. Smashed to pieces.”

“Damn it, what about Logan!”

His voice was very soft. Too soft. “Logan’s alive. Barely. If he lives it’ll be a miracle. He’s in a coma and nobody’s going to get to speak to him for a long, long time.”

My breath whistled out through my teeth. “When did it happen?”

“Evidently the other night. He’s been lying there all this time.”

“The other body?”

“A man. They’re working on him now. He fell out of the car on the way down and the heap landed on top of him. Not much left. What was Logan working on?”

“I wish I knew,” I said slowly. “I wish I knew.”

“There was an envelope on the car seat beside him with your name on it.”

I finished the rest of the drink and laid the glass beside the phone. “Yeah, now I’m beginning to get it,” I said.

“Maybe you’d like to tell me about it.”

“I’ll be down to see you. I still have some time left.” I dropped the phone back in its cradle and took my glass back to the bar. Maybe Lindsey would be wondering what my news was. He shouldn’t have spoken up so fast.

I started out the door.

The blonde in the booth said, “Hello, big feller.”

She smiled and the guy she was with smiled too. A little unpleasantly. I said, “Hello, Carol.”

“Have a drink with us?”

“No, thanks. I’m pretty busy.”

She pushed out from the booth, still smiling at her companion. “I’ll be right back, Howie. I have to talk business with this lug a second, mind?”

He shrugged and told her to go ahead.

The grin was impish and she backed me into a comer by the cigarette machine. “You didn’t come back to see me,” she said. “I waited in every night.”

“Except tonight,” I reminded her.

She nodded. “Pride. Besides, I got lonely. We could have had fun. I like famous people.”

“My kind of famous?”

“Especially. Will you come?”

“Maybe. I was thinking about it earlier. I wanted to ask you if anything was seen of Servo’s playmate.”

The grin faded. “I couldn’t tell you that.”

“Then tell me something else.”

“What? Ask me anything else you want to.”

“Didn’t that peroxide sting?”

The imp came back in her eyes and she pulled at the zipper on my jacket. “The peroxide didn’t but the ammonia did. Want me to tell you about it?”

“Maybe I’ll come up and watch you do it some day.” I pushed her hands away and stepped past her.

“Do that,” she said. “I’ll let you help me.”

Pine Tree Gardens looked more dismal than before, if that was possible. I drove around it once and parked down a ways from the building. There weren’t any lights in the place.

It was too close to the end of things to take any chances. I reached down beside the seat and pulled the gun out I had wedged there previously. I tried sticking it in my waistband but the handle caught me under the ribs. The pockets of my jacket held the thing as long as I let the handle stick up. I didn’t like that either. If I bent over it would fall out and I wasn’t in the mood to be putting a bullet in myself accidentally. There was some kind of a gimmick pocket on the leg of my new work pants that it fitted in snugly enough, so I tucked it down there, closed the flap over it and got out of the car.

The rain was slanting down, driven in my face by a stiff wind. The thunder was still upstairs, but there wasn’t any sheet lightning left in the clouds. I walked back to the building and turned in the yard. There was a new sign stuck in the ground. Wind had torn the corner loose and it slapped against the backboard.

It read:

Somebody could get the place cheap, I thought. There was a curse on it now. A death curse. Maybe Lenny Servo would pick it up and make another joint out of it. The location wasn’t bad. He could even have rooms for rent upstairs.

The door was locked. A skeleton key could have opened it but I didn’t have a skeleton key and wasn’t about to waste time picking it. I wrapped a handkerchief around my hand, punched a windowpane in, opened a catch and raised it. For a minute or so I stood there listening. The rain drummed against the windows and my breath made a soft whisper in the darkness. Nothing else. I crossed the room, stopped and listened again.

The house was the only thing that talked back to me.

A door banged at steady intervals, keeping time to the gusts outside. There was a faint creak of wood from upstairs, a rattle of windows as the foliage bent and scraped against them.

All the furniture was in the house, carelessly covered with sheets and wrapping paper. I crossed between the hulks of white, went out in the hall and found the steps. Every detail of that place was so plain in my mind it was as if I had studied a blueprint of the place beforehand. I tried to figure it out, but it didn’t make sense. The last time I had just come in with Logan and breezed in. Hell, I didn’t study the place at all.

Or did I?

What unconscious instinct did I follow if I did?

I could even remember the curious pattern in the newel post at the top. A door to one room had been warped. There was a torn spot in the carpet beside the wall as if a phone had hung there at one time.

My face worked itself into a grimace and I went on up. The post and the carpet was as I had expected. The door that made the steady slam was the warped one that wouldn’t close all the way.

The room where the body had lain was closed off, but not locked and I went in half expecting to see it still there, the head cradled in the arms, face down.

But it wasn’t the same. Not nearly.

Somebody had taken that room apart piece by piece and stacked all the bits in the middle. The bed, the dresser and the chair had been disassembled and a knife had made a tattered farce out of the mattress. Rayon satin ribbon from the blanket edgings were confetti unfurled on the floor.

The baseboard had been pried loose and jutted out awkwardly. I struck a match and looked in the closet. The cedar paper that lined it had been torn off and lay piled up on the floor. Dents in the plaster showed where something heavy had tapped around seeking out a hollow space.

It was a better job that I could have done. A much better job. So good that there wasn’t any place left to look.

The match burned down and I lit another one.

I cursed under my breath.

At one time the answer had been here. It hadn’t been too long ago. There was photographic evidence that would have pointed the finger straight at the one who counted and now it was gone.

I said, “damn it to hell!”

The voice standing in the doorway said, “That’s the way we felt too. Keep your hands where they are and turn around. Do it slow. Do everything slow. That is, if you wanta keep on living.”

And there was that little bastard of an Eddie Packman with a snub-nosed rod in his fist and the pimply-faced boy from the Ship ’n Shore behind him backing the play with his automatic.

The pencil beam of the flash in the kid’s hand ran up and down my body looking for bulges under my clothes. It passed close enough to Eddie’s arm to be reflected off the cast he wore.

The kid said, “He looks clean, Eddie.”

“Go see, you jerk,” Eddie snarled. “You oughta know by now. Give me the light.” He took it out of the kid’s hand and stuck it in the fingers that dangled out of the cast.

Trying to be casual didn’t come easy to the kid. He sidled crabwise over to me, ran his hands over my pockets, patted my chest and stepped back. “I told you he was clean,” he said sneeringly. The rod in his hand gouged into the small of my back. “Go ahead, tough guy, start walking.”

So I walked. Eddie drew back in the doorway and let me go by. “You can try and run for it if you like. Don’t think I won’t give it to you here or anyplace else.”

His beady eyes glowed at me. They were narrow and mean and almost praying I’d do something that was excuse enough to start shooting. He looked like a rat, his face drawn out in a thin-lipped snarl that showed the uneven edges of his teeth.

Like rats, all right. That’s why they were so damned quiet. They must have frozen the minute I came in and stayed that way until I had walked into their hands.

The kid poked me again and said, “We knew you’d be here. You’re a sucker.”

“Shaddup, you,” Eddie spit out.

Pimples was new at being tough. He didn’t like to get yelled at. “Shut your own mouth. Who the hell you think you are?”

Eddie taught him a quick lesson with the end of his rod. I heard it hit bone and the kid let out a sob that choked off in his throat. He didn’t need a second lesson. He sobbed all the way down and out to Eddie’s sedan where he got in under the wheel holding a bloody handkerchief to his face.

I got the place of honor. In the back seat with Eddie’s gun a cold spot under my ribs. He sat facing me with his leg under him, a laugh pulling the sneer off his face. He looked at me until the car got started then before I saw what he was going to do the cast came around and smashed against the side of my head with a sickening crack that almost churned my guts up in my mouth before I lost all feeling and dropped into a black well of unconsciousness.

My head pounded with every beat of my heart. It hung forward, limply ready to fall if my hands let go of what they were holding. But the hands weren’t holding anything. They were balls of meat tied together behind the back of the chair, senseless things that dangled at the end of my arms. I opened my eyes and watched the fuzzy, distorted angles under my head take shape until they were my legs. My foot twitched spasmodically and moved an inch. I was glad they weren’t tied too.

Whatever lit the room had a yellow glow to it. I made my eyes travel across the rough woodwork of the floor until they met the opposite wall, then down the side to a chair, and another chair, across again to the middle and the four legs of a table.

On the table was an old-fashioned kerosene lamp. The wick was turned too high and the smoke was making a black doughnut on the dirty cracked plaster ceiling. There was a door in the wall on the other side of the room. It was a substantial-looking door that was closed tightly against the jam.

It was still raining outside. It made a drumming noise someplace overhead, occasionally slashing in waves against the side of the building. I sat there letting my head clear, listening to the outside trying to get in and above it all heard a faint slap-slap of water licking at something that held it back. I could smell it too. The river.

Me and the river. We were both alone.

I tried my legs, starting to stand up. The chair rose with me an inch or so but no further. The rope that tied my hands tied the chair to something too. For no reason at all I wondered what time it was. Suddenly not being able to see my watch was more important than anything else. I sat down again and strained against the ropes, and when that didn’t work wiggled them enough to get the circulation started again.

That made it worse than before. They weren’t senseless chunks of meat any longer. They were raw, screaming nerve ends that pulsated with pure agony. I cursed and clamped down on my lip until the taste of blood was in my mouth. I could feel the sweat rolling down my face until it dripped off my chin. The drops made patterns between my feet.

After ten minutes or maybe thirty it passed and became a dull, throbbing ache, but at least there was some feeling in the ends of my fingers. They were wet with blood from where the ropes bit into the skin.

Every position hurt. The best I could do was lean forward like I was when I came awake and stare at the floor. I got tired of watching the floor and looked at my legs. The underside of my right thigh was pretty damn sore. I moved and it stopped hurting some.

But I moved it back where it was in case somebody came in and decided to search me again. The last time they hadn’t noticed the gun in that out-of-place pocket.

Me and the rod. We would have made a good combination if my hands weren’t useless lumps behind me. Great. Useless. Me, I was useless to. I walked head-on into it. I should have known as soon as I saw that room. I should have flattened myself on the floor with the rod cocked and waited for them to come in. I should have done a lot of things.

Now look.

So I sat and thought how nice they had me trapped. Now nobody would ever know. I’d know, but I’d be dead. A few other people would know, but they were the ones who wanted me dead.

Five years, a thousand miles. I had come a long way to wind up in a chair with my hands strapped together and the river close enough to smell. Soon they’d be coming in and they’d look at me and I’d look at them, but they’d be the ones to laugh. I’d just sit here until I was dead.

Maybe somebody would find my body and figure out how it happened. Unlikely. Very unlikely. I wished I could know the whole story before I died. I’d like that. I’d sure like to know how close I was.

I could see the angles now.

Before Lyncastle there was Lenny Servo and a girl named Gracie Harlan. She was a show girl until the breaks got rough, then she tied in with Lenny. They played tricks with the money boys and picked up an income with the con game. Con with sex thrown in. No matter how smart they are it always works. That is, always until somebody has sense enough to squawk.

For that she served time, but it didn’t keep her from wanting to go back in business. Lenny found the heat on in the East and looked around for a spot to operate in. He was a clever character, he was. He found Lyncastle. But he was broke when he found it and didn’t have the connections that could put up big money fast.

Hell, that wasn’t any trouble for Lenny. He put the squeeze on a kid named Johnny McBride. He must have been pretty cute about it. Harlan sexed Johnny into a spot that would have ruined him, then Lenny came across with the suggestion that he lift some funds from the bank for the purpose of financing his operations.

The son of a bitch even had some insurance. He must have been big-time-Charlying Vera West in the meantime until she was on his side and when the bust came Johnny ran to save her neck, not his own!

That Bob Minnow must have been a sharp article too. With Lenny paying off the police and bribing the town into liking the whole setup he had to be. In fact, everybody was on their toes. Harlan, she played it real cute. She found out in a hurry that when Lenny got to be top dog she was deadwood. She was the weak link that could spoil his pretty chain.

So Harlan took out some insurance too. She wrote Bob Minnow a letter and he filed it away. That was the catch. He wasn’t to open it until she died, but at one point in his investigation of Lenny Servo he learned that he was connected with Harlan.

Maybe he suspected the truth. He went ahead and opened the letter anyway and found out he was right. He went out and had it photostated in case something happened to the original. He wasn’t taking any chances on his safe being cracked again.

Just thinking about it put everything right out where I could see it. The insurance wasn’t any good to Harlan unless she let Lenny know what she did. That way he couldn’t afford to knock her off. He had to get the letter back first. Quick, too.

It was quick. Minnow double-checked to verify his source and when the letter came in with the verification he didn’t lose any time getting things started. He went down to his office, but somebody who knew where he’d be and knew damn well he’d have that letter along, passed the word up the line and there was a guy waiting for him.

Me, I said to myself. No, Johnny. Maybe he went there to spill the works to the D. A. and got panicky. Sure, a guy on the run wouldn’t be thinking straight, would he? Hell no! So he got a gun from somewhere in case somebody tried to pick him up and went up to see Minnow.

Panicky. It was hard to picture Johnny getting panicky. The guy was cold as ice no matter what he did.

Feet stamped outside. Metal rasped against metal and a voice swore softly. A door opened and shut and the feet pounded on the floor. Then the door across the room was pushed inward and Lenny Servo was there, his hat spilling water past his eyes. There was a scab on his lip and his face was still swollen. Eddie Packman and the kid were right behind him. Eddie carried a gun. Lenny kept his hands in his pockets while he stared at me, then tossed his hat on the table and shrugged out of his raincoat.

I knew just what was going to happen and the only thing I could do was spit right in his face before Lenny’s hand snapped my head back.

He said, “You stinking bastard!” and hit me again. He kept it up until his knuckles were bloody then he kicked me in the shins with the toe of his shoe and laughed while I vomited bile on the floor.

“You shoulda wore a glove, Lenny,” Packman said. “Now look at your mitt.”

Lenny didn’t answer him. He was looking straight at me, his breath whistling in and out through his teeth. “Where is she, damn you!”

My mouth felt like a puffball of swollen flesh. “Who?”

“Vera! Damn it, you better start talking.”

I said two words to him and they weren’t good night.

Eddie said, “He won’t talk. He’s a tough guy.”

Lenny seemed to relax. He rubbed his knuckles and backed to the table. He liked that pose, perching on the corner with one leg swinging. “That’s right. Tough. I never thought he’d be so tough.”

“He got medals for it in the army,” Eddie said. I brought my head up and it was my turn to stare. I had that creepy sensation again.

Lenny’s eyes were black beads of hate. He was hating me so hard he could hardly get the words between his teeth. “Remember what I told you five years ago? I told you to get out of town and never stop running. I told you once that I’d let Eddie work you over with a knife until there was nothing left but ribbons if you came back and you came back anyway.

“You were scared then, McBride. You knew damn well I wasn’t kidding. You forgot too much. Or did you wonder if I meant it? Now you can find out. Eddie’s got a nasty mind. He likes to see blood run. He likes to start it going with that knife of his and stand there and watch it drip. That’s why I keep Eddie around. People know what he’s like and they never go too far with me.

“Except you, McBride. You had to be one of the wise ones. You and a few others. Now you’ll see how stupid you were in ever coming back.”

Eddie grinned and tossed the gun on the table. It lay there beside the light while he reached in his pocket. The thing didn’t show in his hand until he pressed the button, then the blade jumped out between his fingers, the carefully honed blade the only bright spot in the room.

I got smart for the last time. I said, “You ought to be happy. Three times you tried and now you’re finally going to make out.”

The two of them looked at each other and Eddie shrugged. Lenny cursed silently and lit a cigarette. His hand was still bleeding. He said, “Show him.”

He stepped over and cut a notch out of my right ear. Then the left ear. Pimples got sick to his stomach and Eddie laughed his head off. He said, “Now we’ll have some fun,” and started to unbuckle my belt.

Everybody heard the car brake to a stop outside. The door slammed and a guy came in dripping rain all over the place. He was tall and skinny and wore a gun belt over his raincoat. He looked at the kid who was still sick and over to me. The sight didn’t bother him a bit.

“I got the dame outside,” he said.

Lenny came off the table. “Where was she?”

“Trying to hitch a ride along the highway about eight miles out. She must have been in town all this time.”

“Bring her in.” He waved his thumb at the kid. “You go help him.”

They forgot about me. Even Bloody Eddie. The two of them stood in the doorway waiting for the others to come back. The car doors slammed again and the tall guy came in carrying a woman in a torn gray trench coat. He threw her in a chair and the bandanna came off her head.

Lenny had found Troy Avalard.

There wasn’t much beautiful about her now. Her hair was a soggy mess that was plastered to the sides of her face. She has two long scratches along one cheek and her top lip was a nasty blue color. Her eyes were a dull gaze that reflected the terror she felt, coming to life only when they saw Lenny.

He smacked her across the jaw with his open palm and knocked her right out of the chair. “Isn’t this nice? Isn’t this just plain lovely?” He laughed through his words and hauled her back on the chair. “Now we’re almost finished, It’s too bad Harlan had to do the Dutch or we could have made a real party out of it.”

“Lenny...”

“Shut up, you lousy little tart. I’ve been just waiting for this chance. You don’t think I would have let you get away, do you? You don’t think I’d let you take me for a pile then let you slip out of my fingers. You could do those things when Harlan was alive and get away with it. Not now.” His hand caught her again, this time in the mouth. The chair rocked over backward and she lay there on the floor, her arm up in front of her face.

She tried to scream. He bent down, pulled her arm away and smashed her again. “Lenny! Don’t... oh mother... don’t!” She cowed against the wall without being able to get away from his hand. She was screaming and sobbing, scrambling on her hands and knees, only to be tripped up by the chair.

It was Lenny who knocked her free. She rolled, her dress up to her waist, clawing at the floor as she pulled herself over to me. Her arms grabbed the legs of the chair frantically while the curses poured out of her mouth. They subsided into a long, broken sob that racked her body.

Lenny was smiling. He was happy. He walked to the table, picked up the gun and checked the chamber. His eyes met mine and the smile drew up into a sneer. “You won’t die without company, Johnny. You know why she’s going to die with you?”

I knew, but I sooner hear him tell it.

Lenny saw the knowledge in my face. “You have a brain, kid, Sure, she knew Harlan. They were in the same act once. She knew why Harlan was sent up and figured the play was the same here as back East. She put the bite on me.” He leered evilly. “Sometimes I got my money’s worth back. Sometimes,” he said.

He took a short step forward, sighted the barrel of the rod at her head and his hand tightened on the trigger.

I said, “All her dough’s going to her next of kin, Servo. Your dough. It’s in the bank and some aunt or uncle will get it. Maybe fifty grand.”

All the eyes were turned on me. It got so quiet I could hear Pimples trying to keep his stomach in place. A flush seeped into Lenny’s face while a vein on the side of his neck bulged against his collar.

The knife blade in Eddie’s hand flicked open and shut a couple of times. “The hell with it. Let it stay there.”

“No!” He showed his teeth to me. “I said the tough boy has a brain, Eddie. You should be so smart. Somebody will be looking for Troy one of these days. If she cleared out on her own it wouldn’t be likely that she’d leave all that dough in the bank.” He half turned his head over his shoulder. “Eddie... you know where the bankbooks are in the apartment. Go get them. Bring a withdrawal slip too.”

“How the hell am I gonna drive with this wing?”

“Lobin can drive.”

The tall guy grunted his assent.

Pimples said, “I’d just as soon go too. I don’t feel so good.”

“Okay, go ahead, the whole damn bunch of you. Beat it. Get back here in a half hour.”

So we weren’t too far from town. A half hour. “Fifteen minutes each way. The place was right at the edge of town on the river.

The three of them filed out. The car roared into life, spun its wheels in some gravel as it turned around, then shot off down a road.

Lenny glanced at me, the huddled figure at my feet and went through the door to the outside. I heard him slide a lock in a hasp and try it.

I had ten seconds at best. No longer. Ten lousy seconds that could kill me or keep me alive. I kicked her. I gave her a boot in the ribs and she moaned. I kicked her again, pushing her away from the chair. I got one toe under her chin and lifted her head up.

“Can you hear me? Do you understand what I’m saying? Damn it, nod or do something.”

Her eyes were blank. One was shutting fast.

“Listen. Hear what I say.” The words rushed out of my mouth in a harsh whisper. “Under my right leg there’s a gun. It’s under my leg in a pocket. Look, reach your hand in and feel it. Damn it, Troy, move! Do you want to die! He’ll be back any second!”

The lifeless look was still in her eyes. I let my foot down and her head dropped again just as Lenny came through the door. He shut it behind him, curled his lip up and came over.

He had to hit me again. His fist split my lips open and a gray haze clouded my mind. When my eyes opened he hit me again, but it was beyond hurting now. Just something dull that made my head move and kept my brain numb.

I was able to sit there with my head over on my shoulder and watch him work Troy over then. The devil was in his face as he punched her in the stomach and kicked at her while she lay face down on the floor. All the crazy hate he ever had in him came out until he was exhausted. He let her lie there and went back to the table. Twice, he picked up the gun and pointed it at us. Twice he put it down. The fifty grand in the bank was too much dough to waste.

So he put the gun back and pulled a chair up to the table. Troy groaned. Her mouth was making sounds like a baby, bubbling sounds that flecked her chin with red. Both hands were curved into painful talons as she pulled herself across the floor toward me in a blind direction that took her away from him.

Her hand rested on my shoe; the other clawed at my leg and she pulled herself into a sitting position. Lenny started to laugh.

“Why don’t you give her a hand, McBride? Why don’t you help the lady? You like to help the ladies out, don’t you? Then give her a hand. She needs it bad.” He thought it was so funny that he threw back and laughed until the tears rolled down his face. He was a stinking pig sitting there, a son of a bitch of a cheap con man, not the Lenny Servo who liked fancy offices and fine clothes. He was nothing but a hood at heart and it showed on his face. He laughed and laughed and laughed.

He laughed so hard he never saw Troy flop across my lap and never saw her hand slip under my leg and pull the gun out. He was still laughing when she fell back to the floor because she was too weak to hold on any longer. I was praying under my breath when the laugh choked off.

Lenny ripped out a curse, snatched the gun from the table and swung it at her. There was a deafening blast, the sharp stench of burned cordite and Lenny stood there, a surprised expression on his face because he had a hole in his throat.

He didn’t fall. He just folded up and sank to the floor cross-legged. For a couple of seconds he sat there, then bent forward and fell on his face.

“God!” I said.

She looked up at me pitifully. One hand went to her chest. The other tried to stop the blood that spilled out of her mouth.. Lenny hadn’t missed after all. She was dying and she knew it. She was minutes away from death and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

The things I was thinking must have made a picture on my face. Her mouth drew back around her teeth and she pushed herself to my side with one hand. I wanted to tell her not to, but I couldn’t say a word. I wanted to tell her to save every minute she could of life and not waste those minutes trying to do something she wouldn’t be able to do.

Her fingers found the ropes on my hands and made a feeble effort to untie them. I could feel the torn edges of her nails rake the backs of my hands and hear her breath bubbling in her throat and she fought the knots. They were too damn tight. There wasn’t one chance in a million she could get them loose and I knew it.

Troy knew it too. She looked up at me once, then reached out for the gun again. When I saw what she was going to do I froze in the chair. The nose of the gun went down until it lay along the knots. I spread my hands as far apart as I could to keep them out of the way of the slug. I was saying another prayer that she wouldn’t get me too.

When she pulled the trigger the gun jumped out of her hand. Both my hands stung from the blast and I knew there was a furrow of raw flesh along one palm. I wasn’t worried about that. I pulled at the ropes, cursed and pulled again. They gave the third time and I fell face forward on top of her, pieces of the ropes still clinging to my wrists.

Troy was smiling at me. She was almost gone, but she was smiling at me. I barely heard her say, “Undress me.”

Sex right there at the end. I shook my head. “Thanks, kid. You’ll never know how much I’d like to thank you.”

I touched her cheek, leaned down and kissed her forehead. Her eyes closed when I did it and opened again for the last time.

“Undress me,” she said. Her eyes closed.

That was all. She was dead then. I ran my hand across her swollen mouth wishing Lenny had lived long enough for me to get my hands on him. Troy, lovely red-headed Troy who never got to wear clothes. She wanted to be naked when she died. Like cowboys and their boots. It was important to them. Maybe it was important to her too.

My fingers were too stiff to fumble with the buttons. I grabbed the cloth of her dress and tore it open down the front. Gently. I stripped it off and did the same thing with the slip.

Then I saw why it was so important that she die naked. To me it was important and she had tried to tell me that with her eyes. Pasted to her stomach with cellulose tape was a photograph. It was a picture of her without any clothes on. She was m bed.

She wasn’t alone.

I sat there and laughed until I heard the car stop outside. Then I picked up the two guns and went to the other room and stood in the dark waiting. Eddie, Pimples and the guy he had called Lobin came in, shut the door and went past me into the room where death had had such a wonderful sweet time.

Lobin went for his gun and I shot him in the head. Pimples wasn’t so lucky. He would have lived if he hadn’t tried to live up to his job. He got it in the chest and died crying.

That left Eddie Packman.

I was right when I said he looked like a rat. A rat can be nasty when it thinks it has a chance, but when a rat is cornered all its ingrown instincts come out and it’s a cowardly rodent with sharp yellowed teeth and eyes that dart from side to side to find a hole to crawl in.

Eddie Packman was a rat. He didn’t look like himself any more. He looked smaller, the cast on his arm a huge fungus growth that weighed him down whenever he tried to move.

I said, “Eddie... when I came to town I promised to do a few things before I left. I was going to kill somebody. I was going to break somebody’s arms. That last one was you.”

There were two more guns on the floor. I picked them up and tossed them on the table, then laid the two I had down beside them.

Then I started walking toward Eddie.

He took his chance with the knife and had it out as he jumped me.

A chance. That was all it was. I grabbed his wrist, picked it out of his fingers and tossed it in the corner. He kicked and screamed and punched at me as I carried him to the table, screamed again when I laid his good arm across the top and fainted when I leaned on it and snapped the bone clean in two. I waited until he came out of it, broke the cast on his arm with the butt of a gun, propped it up against the table and snapped it all over again.

Eddie’s eyes were staring up at the ceiling, but he wasn’t seeing anything.

Lobin’s gun was the best. A police positive. There were extra shells in his gun belt that I took along too. He still had his badge pinned to his jacket under the raincoat. They might think he died in the line of duty and even give him a nice military burial.

I went outside in the rain and got in the car. Eddie’s sedan was parked in back of it. I turned the key, kicked the starter and pulled out on the pavement. Not far away the lights above Lyncastle threw a spectrum of color against the low-hanging clouds.

Soon now, the lights would return to a normal shade. Someday, even, it might become a normal city.

But first somebody had to die.